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Rates (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2006

My Lords, this order brings to a conclusion the reform of the domestic rates in Northern Ireland on which the Government have embarked. It replaces the existing system with a new one—which is unique, but who knows for how long, in the United Kingdom—based on the capital value of a property. It is a tax on house prices, pure and simple. It is a modern-day window tax, in which government inspectors even take into account whether a house has double glazing. As I said in Committee, we are not opposed to reform of rates in Northern Ireland, but we are completely opposed to this new system. As my party leader, David Cameron, wrote in the Belfast Telegraph two weeks ago, it is just ““unjust””. Many people in Northern Ireland, through no action of their own but simply as a result of the peace process, have seen the value of their property rocket in recent years. Parts of Northern Ireland now have the fastest-rising house prices anywhere in the UK. I am not just talking about south Belfast and North Down, but Lisburn and Newry as well. Increases in property values have far outstripped the growth in incomes. As a result, many people who happen to live in a higher-value property area will literally be clobbered. People on fixed incomes—pensioners who might be asset-rich, but in cash terms, poor—single-person households and those just outside the benefits system will be hit especially hard. It is not just those people who live in what we might think of in London as higher-value properties. People in fairly modest homes will also be hurt. It is no good the Minister claiming that more than half of homes in Ulster will see a decrease in the amount that they pay in rates when the new system will produce some quite exceptional increases. Let us take the retired teacher who bought his house 16 years ago for £58,000. It is now valued at £290,000 by contractors for the Valuation and Lands Agency. As a result he has just been informed that his rates bill will go up from around £1,000 to £2,000. That is over £700 more than the £1,300 in council tax that the Prime Minister pays on his £3.3 million house in Connaught Square. If he lived in Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister would now be facing a rates bill of around £22,000. Yet the Secretary of State boasted at this year’s Labour Party Conference that he is introducing a fairer system of local taxation in Northern Ireland. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell the House where the fairness is in that—some peace dividend for decent, hardworking families in Northern Ireland. To gather the information required to implement the new system involves huge erosions of liberty. Unprecedented powers are being given to the Government to compile data on family homes, literally to spy on people using aerial photographs and the like. I mention too the sinister Article 38 powers of entry and invasions of privacy for government inspectors to assess, with fines for those who simply want to keep the snoopers out. The new system is unjust and undemocratic. It is opposed overwhelmingly across the community in Northern Ireland. It is opposed by all the Northern Ireland political parties, and I have letters from them all, bar Sinn Fein. Yet the Government plough on regardless. Why is that? They do so because the same Government that put off the council tax revaluation in England because they feared an electoral backlash do not contest a single vote in Northern Ireland. So the Government think that they can get away with it. This is yet another example of the Government’s double standards. The reality is that if this system were not introduced this coming April, it would not affect the Northern Ireland budget by one halfpenny. We have been told time and again by Ministers that the reform is supposedly revenue-neutral, so it is hardly pressing. What is the hurry? We believe that local government finance should be left to the local people in Northern Ireland to decide, not imposed as an experiment by Labour Government Ministers. There is no reason why this matter could not have awaited the restoration of an Assembly. At St Andrews the Government sought to use rates as part of the negotiations to restore devolution. Capping and extra help for pensioners is either right and should be introduced on its own merits, or it is not. It should not form part of an attempt to blackmail Unionists into sharing power with Sinn Fein. The Conservative Party believes that there should be a cap and extra help for poorer pensioners, irrespective of whether the parties sign up to St Andrews and devolution is restored. That is why I tabled the amendment on the Order Paper in my name. I have listened with care to what the Minister had to say and will listen to his response. If he meets the letter and spirit of my amendment, which would be a welcome change of heart on the part of the Government, it will go some way to minimising the impact of the legislation on large numbers of people.